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ARISTOTLE POLITICS BK II CH 3 1261B

"that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Every one thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill"

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Vice President Biden has not closed the door to a presidential run, according to NBC News sources, but it is far from clear he will enter the 2016 campaign, with much of the Democratic Party already behind Hillary Clinton.

Posts Tagged ‘policies’

Why the Central Bankers Are Meeting In Secret

Many of the world’s central bankers are meeting in Sydney today, at a secret location, to coordinate their drive to force draconian austerity measures on nations, in order to prop up their failed monetary system.

That’s why they are meeting in secret—if the people understood that the central bankers are working out how many people they’ll need to kill to save the banking system, the people might object to them being here.

Consider the chronology of how the world got to this point:

In July 2007, after a decade of warnings by American physical economist Lyndon LaRouche that the world financial system would disintegrate, the U.S. sub-prime crisis triggered the global financial collapse (Bear Sterns), which by September 2008 turned into a full-blown meltdown of the $1.4 quadrillion global derivatives bubble (Lehman Brothers, AIG).

In August 2007, LaRouche proposed the Homeowners and Bank Protection Act: to keep people in their homes; to preserve the functionality of the banking system by putting it into bankruptcy protection, to write off their unpayable derivatives and bad debts; and to return the system to Glass-Steagall regulations.

LaRouche’s solution was rejected, and instead in October 2008, the very central banks which created the crisis, led by the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, and the European Central Bank, dictated a $24 trillion global bail-out of the system by national governments. In Australia, Kevin Rudd implemented the bank guarantee, stimulus spending and the first homebuyers grant, and the Future Fund was put at the disposal of the banks to prop them up.

By July 2009, it was obvious the bail-out had transferred the bankruptcy of the banking system onto the governments which were propping it up. LaRouche forecast that by October the bankruptcy of national governments would trigger the final meltdown.

In October 2009, Dubai defaulted on debts of US$59 billion; it was bailed out by Abu Dhabi, but 13 other default risks quickly emerged, including the PIGS in Europe—Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain—Great Britain, and the biggest danger of all, the U.S.

2010: on 17th January, Sunday Telegraph economics writer Ambrose Evans-Pritchard revealed advanced plans by the European Central Bank (ECB) to enforce draconian austerity measures on the PIGS, dictating massive cuts to wages, pensions and social services so those nations avoided debt default to save the euro. The ECB intoned sovereignty is a “largely obsolete concept” as it declared it would impose a “permanent limitation” on the PIGS. The chief economist of the IMF, Olivier Blanchard, has since called for the PIGS to impose wage cuts to save the euro. Vicious austerity is on the agenda in other places too: In Australia, Kevin Rudd is blaming the deficit on old people living too long, and in the U.S., Barack Obama is slashing Medicare for the elderly to rein in the U.S. deficit.

The world’s central bankers meeting in Sydney are unaccountable powerbrokers, disguised as “independent”, who have replaced accountable governments as managers of the economy, and globalised the financial system under private control. Through them, the financier oligarchs in the City of London, and its satellites in Wall Street, Amsterdam and Zürich etc., are in charge of the financial system—not elected governments.

Just like in the 1930s, the austerity measures planned by the central bankers cannot be implemented through democratic means, because people tend to object to being killed. To save their system in the Great Depression, the leading central bankers in the Bank of England and the Bank for International Settlements, backed the rise of Hitler and Europe’s other fascist régimes to impose their austerity program.

What is Sydney’s secret central bank gathering planning to do this time?

The Money Assassins

“We economic hit men really have been the ones responsible for creating this first truly global empire and we work in many different ways. But perhaps the most common is that we will identify a country that has resources our corporations covet, like oil, and then arrange a huge loan to that country from the World Bank or one of it’s sister organizations. But the money never actually goes to the country. Instead it goes to our big corporations to build infrastructure projects in that country. Power plants, industrial parks, ports…things that benefit a few rich people in that country in addition to our corporations, but really don’t help a majority of the people at all. However, the whole country is left holding a huge debt.”

It’s such a big debt they can’t repay it, and that’s part of the plan, that they can’t repay it. And so at some point we economic hit men go back to them and say ‘Listen, you owe us a lot of money. You can’t pay your debts, so sell your oil real cheap to our oil companies, allow us to build a military base in your country, or send troops in support of ours to someplace in the world like Iraq, or vote with us on the next U.N. vote.’ They have to have their electric utility company privatized and their water and sewage system privatized and sold to US corporations or other multinational corporations.

“So there was a whole mushrooming thing, and it’s so typical of the way the IMF and the World Bank work. They put a country in debt, and it’s such a big debt it can’t pay it, and then you offer to refinance the debt and get it to pay even more interest. And you demand this quid pro quo which you call ‘conditionality’ or ‘good governance’ which means basically that they’ve got to sell off their resources, including many of their social services, their utility companies, their school systems sometimes, their penal systems, their insurance systems, to foreign corporations. So it’s a double, triple, quadruple whammie!”

But the economic hitmen aren’t just taking contracts out on nations, they have us in their sights too. Just as they give big loans to countries to saddle them with debts, they give big loans to ordinary men and women too. They give them massive mortgages to pay off, and cards loaded with credit (aka debt). Soon enough, you’re a slave of the system, with no prospect of escape. You have to keep on the treadmill, you have to scamper forwards with the other rats in the rat race, you have to keep your nose clean, or rather extremely dirty with all that brown-nosing you’re having to do. You can’t afford to aggravate your employer. You’re locked into the system. You’re terrified of losing your job because then you won’t be able to pay your debts. The economic hitman’s silencer is pointing at you right between the eyes.

The Old World Order use the use the same tactics on the big and the small scale: whether it’s a nation or an individual, get them into debt and then you own them.

You’re not free, You’re not human. You’re a performing monkey, a rat with no option but to stay in the race. You’re a slave, completely under their control, which was their goal right from the start.

But if you buy property at the right time, you can be a partial winner. House prices might shoot up, and you will have a valuable asset. But what of others who didn’t get on the property ladder at the right time? They might now be priced out of the market. Ownership of houses generates winners and losers. There’s no skill involved, just luck. Did you get your timing right or not? By chance, some do, and others don’t. That chance could shape your future. You might rise up the pecking order, or fall down. You might have an asset that your children will inherit and then they will have an advantage over less fortunate children who have nothing to inherit from their parents.
Why should home ownership dictate your wealth and status, your prospects in life, and even that of your children? It shouldn’t, but it does. It has nothing at all to do with merit.

One of the classic mantras of the Power Elite to maintain their rule is contained in the principle: divide and rule.

Look at how society is constructed. The basic unit is the family. Each family lives in its own small, square box (house), cut off from others. Each has one or more cars in which they can again cut themselves off from others. Each is determined to do the best for its own members, and to hell with everyone else.

A society based on the family is full of division, of narrow self-interest, of fear and distrust of others. Everywhere, there are barriers between people. No one is cooperating. We are in the most horrific zero-sum game where if one family wins another loses. Families rising up are invariably pushing other families down. Rich families send their children to private schools to ensure that they get a better education than those who can’t afford private school. Once you have gone to a private school, and then an elite college or university, you are eligible for the fine things in life: the best jobs, the best houses, the most attractive partners. You are part of a rigged system, a cartel which is designed to favour you and penalize those who don’t share your privileged background. In Britain, this is known as “the old school tie”. If you walk into a job interview and you have the right tie and the right accent, you will get the job. An equally or more meritorious candidate from a poorer background has no chance. This is how society works. This is the gospel of the family.

Anyone who does not come from a good, stable, prosperous family is in real trouble. They are likely to slip into the dreaded underclass where they will lead a life of grinding misery with little or no chance of improving themselves. They will resort to drugs and crime to get them through.

We have been divided into countless selfish, competing little units and we are being ruled by the elite, dynastic families at the top of the pyramid. We live in a disguised feudal system; the lords at the top and the serfs (us) effectively owned by them.

We are all cutting each other’s throats, desperately trying to climb the pyramid and drag down those above us and stand on those below us. No one is ever condemned for saying, “I’d do anything for my family” (this is the principle by which most parents operate), yet Christianity says “Love thy neighbour as thyself”; “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” No well-off family loves the underclass, no well-off family wants to be done to as they do unto the underclass. None of these families are Christians, even though they say they believe in Christ.

Capitalism is a cut-throat ideology, a robber’s creed. It’s all about how you can get one over your neighbours, how you can get more money, status and power than others. The “American Dream” is about a person or family rising from nowhere to the very top, above everyone else. It’s not about a whole nation rising.

Life is very simple in many respects. Would you rather have leaders who think that society is improved by raising up everyone, or by those who seek their own personal advantage at any cost, regardless of the impact on others. Do you think Wall Street operates in your interests or its own? And if it is not operating in the interests of all the people, why is it tolerated at all? “Greed is good,” said Gordon Gekko. Perhaps for the likes of him, but not for anyone else.

Why do we sign up for our own servitude? It doesn’t need to be like this.

A very simple moral test can be applied to every decision. Is it done to benefit you alone or to help you and everyone else? Wall Street’s morality is the former; Washington DC’s morality is the former; capitalism promotes the former; the family abides by the former.

The antidote to family is community. The antidote to capitalism is community. The antidote to narrow self-interest is community. The antidote to Wall Street and big business is community. “Christianity” is theoretically (but not in practice) about community. Illumination is about community.

And community is all about trying to create the environment for each and every person to achieve their maximum potential. An underclass would be unacceptable in a society based on community. Racism, sexism, discrimination, privilege would be unacceptable.

At the moment, a tiny elite live as gods while the vast majority of humanity live in grim conditions with only a few dollars a day to survive. Imagine a world where everyone is flourishing, achieving, contributing. What could humanity not achieve? This is the path of light, the way to the True God. What we have at the moment is rule by the Demiurge, based on division, conflict, self-interest, hatred, selfishness and greed. The institutions of the world serve his and their interests, not those of the people. His ideology has triumphed. The Power Elite, the Old World Order, are his Chosen Ones who have implemented his destructive, hateful will to the letter.
Do you think there is a single godly person in Wall Street? They are the high priests of the Demiurge, and their skyscraper offices are his synagogues. Their chosen task in life is to enrich themselves at everyone else’s expense.

To this day there are people working for the defunct organisation Lehman Brothers. Their task is to unravel all of the deals that Lehman was involved with before it collapsed. These people, who took huge bonuses while their bank was crashing, caused by their disastrous decisions, are still being given huge bonuses because otherwise they would leave and it would be impossible to clean up their mess. In other words, they were paid a fortune while they were destroying their bank with their recklessness and stupidity, and now they are being paid a fortune to clean up their own disaster. They win no matter the circumstances. That’s the way the OWO operates.

A bank robber goes into a bank and steals a million dollars – that’s a crime. A chief executive officer goes into a bank, nearly bankrupts it through his incompetence, then takes out a hundred million dollars in salary, share options, benefits in kind and finally an enormous payoff when he finally gets fired. That’s business. It’s entirely legitimate. But think about it – who’s the bigger criminal? Who has done the most damage to the bank? If you are “authorized”, you can do anything you like. You have a licence to help yourself to as much money as you like. No one will stop you.

Who are the authorities? Who appoints them? Who monitors and regulates them? Who is allowed to remove them from office? Do the people ever have any say?

At Davos, a luxury ski resort in Switzerland, world leaders gather annually to discuss the economic future of the world. Politicians, bankers, industrialists, media moguls…the entire ruling class, the Old World Order, come together to decide how to carve up the world pie. You have no say in any of it. No one consults you. Your opinions are ignored. This is the way the world works. Why do you tolerate it? Why does anyone put up with this?

It was these people, those fat cats who go to Davos, who wrecked the world’s economy, who caused millions to lose their jobs and homes. What makes them think they are experts, that they are “good” for the world, that the world would fall apart without them? The reverse is true. If they vanished, it would be the best thing for the world. As the old joke says, what do you call a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the sea? A good start. The same is true for all bankers, accountants, politicians, stock market traders, advertisers, celebrities.

We won’t be free until it’s no longer possible to point at someone and say, “There goes one of the Power Elite.” There should be no Power Elite, no one with vastly more money than others, no one with vastly more influence, no one who is treated as a king.

Chapter Eight

The Truth About Alternative 3

Nikola Tesla became aware early in the 20th century that the planet was heating up, so much so that by the first decades of the 21st century, Earth would be almost uninhabitable for the human species. Tesla’s source of information was the weird voices he was picking up off of his specially modified radio receiver.

These mysterious voice broadcasts were the outcome of Tesla’s initial research into strange radio signals he picked up during his experiments at Colorado Springs in 1899. By now, Tesla had improved his receiving equipment to enable him to pickup voice broadcasts. However, these voices were being heard on frequencies that were suppose to be unable to carry these kinds of transmissions, but they were there nevertheless.

Tesla wrote that these voices were of men from other worlds -men who had lived on Earth sometime in its prehistoric past, had developed the technology to colonize nearby space and were still interested in the inhabitants they had left behind. These men had colonized the planet Mars as well as maintaining bases on the moon. Others of their kind had gone deeper into space, out of our solar system altogether to explore the galaxy.

It had been decided that the Earth was to become a reserve so to speak, to allow nature to take its course and new species to evolve and fill the niches left vacant by the departure of its first inhabitants. However, some things were not left to nature alone. The first men decided to leave behind remnants of themselves in the form of our early ancestors. Tesla’s description of the re-seeding of planet Earth with intelligent hominids sounds very much like genetic manipulation.

This could explain why reports of UFO occupants, who claim extraterrestrial origins, look so much like us. The majority of contacts with beings who step out of UFOs all agree on their human-like appearance. With very few exceptions, all alleged extraterrestrials possess very human features. One head with two eyes a nose and a mouth, two arms, two hands with five fingers, two legs and feet. Many have been reported to be so human in appearance that they are indistinguishable from normal humans. Maybe this is because they are human -the first humans.

Of course, Tesla died before the modern UFO wave, but his descriptions of his purported extraterrestrials bear an uncanny resemblance to our UFO occupants.

An April Tools Joke too Close to the Truth

At 9:00 PM on Monday June 20 1977, Anglia television based in Norwich United Kingdom, put out a one hour TV special. The program was to be simultaneously transmitted to a number of other countries which included Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Greece, and Yugoslavia. The name of the TV special was called Alternative 3, it was to shock the nation, jam media telephone lines and rock the station’s credibility.

At 10:00 PM Anglia was besieged with calls from irate viewers demanding more information. Callers were told not to panic, the program was simply an April Fools hoax that had been pre-empted until June 20. However, many were not convinced that it was a hoax.

Chapter Five

Tesla and Electronic Voice Phenomena

No one can deny that computers and electronics have forever changed our way of life. There are electronic controls and computer chips in everything from the small appliances that toast our bread to the cars we drive, and make possible myriad forms of new entertainment, from VCRs and DVDs to video games and talking stuffed toys.

For a number of years some people have claimed that electronics can be useful in a quite unexpected way: to contact the dead, or at least allow the dead to contact us. Obviously, these claims are highly controversial. They make many assumptions: that there is life after death, that the dead are interested in contacting us, and that they have the means by which to do so.

The mysterious signals that Tesla received could be linked to what is now known as Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP). Tesla was one of the first men to experiment with the necessary electronic receiving equipment. The very same equipment, albeit more sophisticated than Tesla had access to, is being used today to receive EVP.

Many people experimenting with Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) and Instrumental Transcommunication (ITC) say they have received messages from “the other side” through radios, tape recorders, VCRs, televisions, telephones, and even computers.

These phenomena have manifest themselves since the appearance of the instruments themselves. EVP, for example, has been reported for well over 50 years or more: Strange voices being picked up with primitive radios during WWI and heard faintly on magnetic recording tape.

Tesla may have been the first to receive these electronic voices from another plane of reality. As with other modes of communications with alleged discarnate entities, care must be taken not to be swayed by the stories often told by beings from the other side. Tesla may have been duped, so-to-speak, by voices that only pretended to be creatures from other planets.

This is nothing new to those who are familiar with the tall tales told to them by spirits who claim to be ascended masters, Abraham Lincoln or Ashtar of the Interplanetary Space Command. Spirits love to tell lies to anyone who will listen.

Those such as Tesla and Marconi who experimented with radio early on were the first to report anomalous sounds and voices emanating from their radio receivers. These early reports were looked upon as mildly interesting curiosities and quickly forgotten.

Theosophist Alice Bailey in 1936, transcribed these words of her great teacher, the Tibetan Master DK:

“Within the next few years the fact of the eternity of existence will have advanced from the realm of questioning into the realm of certainty. Through the use of the radio by those who have passed over, will communication be set up and reduced to a true science.”

It has been widely written that Edison and his assistant, Dr. Miller Hutchinson, were seriously at work building a machine to achieve spirit communication. Tesla wrote in his journals that Thomas Edison had heard from other engineers that Tesla had been receiving mysterious voices and sounds over radio frequencies that were not conducive for the broadcasting of the human voice.

Edison, who publicly mocked Tesla and his experiments, privately believed that Tesla had managed to find the correct frequency to enable communication with spirits of the dead. Edison was determined to discover Tesla’s secret, and be the first to get the “Spirit Phone” on the market.

In his diary, Dr. Miller Hutchinson wrote:

“Edison and I are convinced that in the fields of psychic research will yet be discovered facts that will prove of greater significance to the thinking of the human race than all the inventions we have ever made in the field of electricity.”

Edison failed to live long enough to succeed with his ill-gotten idea to best Tesla. Tesla simply noted in his journal that Edison was trying to use his patents to talk with specters. Edison thought that Tesla could listen to spirits, Tesla considered that he was hearing people from other planets – the voices could have been the same, they may have just changed their stories to fit the belief system of the listener.

In 1967, Edison allegedly spoke through West German clairvoyant Sigrun Seuterman, in trance, about his earlier efforts to develop equipment for recording voices from the beyond. Edison also made suggestions as to how to modify TV sets and tune them to 740 megahertz to get paranormal effects. (Session recorded on tape by Paul Affolter, Liestal, Switzerland).

On September 15, 1952, two Catholic priests, Father Ernetti and Father Gemilli were collaborating on a musical research project; Ernetti as an internationally respected scientist, physicist, philosopher and music lover, and Gemilli as President of the Papal Academy.

The two men were trying to record a Gregorian chant, but a wire in their equipment kept breaking. Exasperated, Gemilli looked up and asked his dead father for help. To his amazement his fathers voice was heard saying: “Of course I shall help you. I’m always with you.” They repeated the experiment, and the voice, even clearer than before, said: “But Zucchini, it is clear, don’t you know it is I?.”

Gemilli was astonished. No one knew his childhood nickname but his father. The priest was suddenly afraid, for as a Catholic priest he had no right to speak with the dead. Troubled, the two men eventually sought an audience with Pope Pius XII in Rome.

Gemilli told the Pontiff of his experience, and to his surprise, was reassured. According to the 1990 translated text of his meeting, Pope Pius told Gemilli:

“You really need not worry about this. The existence of this voice is strictly a scientific fact and has nothing whatsoever to do with spiritism. The recorder is totally objective. It receives and records sound waves from wherever they come. This experiment may perhaps become the cornerstone for a building for scientific studies which will strengthen people’s faith in a hereafter.”

Electronic Voice Phenomena was next researched by two men from California, the medium Attila von Szalay and paranormal researcher Raymond Bayless. In 1956, they recorded, quite by chance, a series of paranormal voices on magnetic tape, voices that should not logically have been there.

Though Bayless reported their experiments in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, like Tesla years before, not a single person contacted the society or the researchers to enquire about their work.

It was not until 1959 when Friedrich Juergenson, a film producer in Sweden, first made public his amazing voice recordings, did the world sit up and take notice of the Tesla voice phenomena.

Juergenson, while making a documentary, had decided to try and tape bird songs. When he played the tape back he was startled to hear, in among the tweeting and chirping, what sounded like his mother’s voice say in German:

“Friedrich, you are being watched. Friedel, my little Friedel, can you hear me?”

Years later, Juergenson said that when he heard his mother’s voice he was convinced he had made “an important discovery.”

Radio Contact With the Dead?

In 1967, Juergenson’s Radio Contact with the Dead was translated into German, and Latvian psychologist Dr. Konstantin Raudive read it skeptically. He visited Juergenson to learn his methodology, decided to experiment on his own, and soon began developing his own experimental techniques.

Like Juergenson, Raudive too heard the voice of his own deceased mother, who called him by his boyhood name:

“Kostulit, this is your mother.”

Eventually he catalogued tens of thousands of voices, many under strict laboratory conditions.

He published his book, Unhoerbares Wird Hoerbar (The Inaudible Becomes Audible), based on 72,000 voices he recorded.

In 1971, the chief engineers of Pye Records Ltd. decided to do a controlled experiment with Raudive. They invited him to their sound lab and installed special equipment to block out any radio and television signals. They would not allow Raudive to touch any of the equipment.

Raudive used one tape recorder which was monitored by a control tape recorder. All he could do was speak into a microphone. They taped Raudive’s voice for eighteen minutes and none of the experimenters heard any other sounds. But when the scientists played back the tape, to their amazement, they heard over two hundred voices recorded on tape.

In the same year, Colin Smythe, Ltd. England, published expanded English translations of Raudive’s book: Breakthrough, an Amazing Experiment in Electronic Communication with the Dead. Dr. Konstantin Raudive was a Latvian psychologist who had read Juergenson’s book, Radio Contact with the Dead, with a great deal of skepticism when it was translated into German in 1967. Nevertheless he was intrigued and over several years carried out hundreds of experiments under laboratory conditions.

In the years that followed, Juergenson and Raudive continued their research that inspired countless others to emulate their experiments. But constant criticism that the EVP was nothing more than ambient sounds processed by the mind into a semblance of speech, or snatches of shortwave radio, dampened enthusiasm for research in Europe.

However, during the 1970s and early 80s in the United States, EVP continued to evolve with much of the work spearheaded by a retired engineer, George Meek. In 1971, Meek opened a small laboratory Philadelphia after a lifetime’s interest in the paranormal. Meek soon became immersed in EVP -and realized its limitations. Meek was convinced that for electronic communication with the dead to really make its mark, apparatus more sophisticated than cassette recorders and AM radios would be necessary.

Meek decided that the best way to succeed was to attempt contact with someone who had passed on and work with him and his team in achieving two-way communication with the Other Side. The problem of course was gaining the initial contact.

Meek wrote to the now defunct American magazine The Psychic Observer, which put him in touch with Bill O’Neil, an electronics engineer who was also a gifted clairvoyant. Through O’Neil, Meek’s team, later to form themselves into the Metascience Foundation, made contact with a man who claimed to have been dead for five years and who was a medical doctor while on earth.

“Doc Nick,” as the discarnate became known, suggested to O’Neil that the team use certain audio frequencies instead of the white noise traditionally used by EVP researchers. This, he said, would serve as an energy source against which the sounds produced by his vocal cords could be played. The resulting experiments worked better than anyone had ever expected.

Soon after, a spirit being calling himself Dr. George Jeffries Mueller, was recruited to the team, or rather he announced he had come to join them after materializing one afternoon in O’Neil’s living room. Mueller claimed to be a deceased university professor and NASA scientist.

Mueller told Meek and O’Neil that he had died in 1967 and gave them numerous facts with which to verify his identity including his security number; the place where his death certificate could be found; and intimate details of his life and scholastic achievements. All of them checked out.

He began communicating regularly; helping to design a new piece of electromagnetic equipment that would convert spirit voices to audible voices. On October 27, 1977, his first words were recorded on the new system Meek called Spiricom.

Tapes of the Mueller conversations were subsequently released to the public. The voice of Mueller can be plainly heard joking with Meek and O’Neil and discussing topics from his favorite foods to the view of time from the spirit world.

He gave unlisted telephone numbers asking them to make calls to confirm the identity (which they did successfully) of the people at the other end (usually top-level government personnel); and he gives O’Neil precise directions with which to help build experimental video equipment to take spirit communication to the next level.

The clarity of the communications is astounding – and sometimes amusing: in one conversation, Mueller identifies a problem with a particular device and impatiently barks at O’Neil:

“The fault lies in an impedance mis-match which can be corrected by using a 150 ohm half-watt resistor in parallel with a 0.0047 microfad ceramic capacitor.”

Eventually, Mueller ceased contact after telling Meek and O’Neil that natural law meant he could “not be here forever.”

(He did in fact return once more to a group of ITC researchers working in Rivenick, Germany, led by Adolph Homes. In 1991 they received on a TV screen an image which was said to be that of Dr Mueller).

Meek concluded that Mueller had progressed to a higher state of being to such a point that Spiricom could no longer be used for communication. Apparently, only beings closest to the Earth plane of existence, could communicate through the relatively primitive electronics.

It had become clear that the most limiting aspect of the device was the fact that it depended almost entirely on the operator possessing mediumistic or psychic abilities. Obviously, gifted individuals like Bill O’Neil, Dr. Konstantin Raudive and Nikola Tesla were a necessary component in the reception of signals and voices from the Aether.

Much like batteries energize a portable CD player, the vibrant field of energy that surrounds special people activates electronic equipment tuned to receive other realities. Without these people, it is doubtful that enough energy can be provided by the discarnate entity to achieve communication.

George Meek fully accepted this and never patented Spiricom. His hope was that science would carry on his work and take it to the next level, going beyond what he and O’Neil were able and unable to accomplish.

In 1982 Meek held a press conference in Washington, DC and revealed Spiricom’s secrets. The conference made little impact on a largely skeptical world; in fact a large section of the media even refused to attend, so the device went largely unreported -except by the tabloids who naturally poked fun at the sensational story. Since that time, the focus of attention in terms of results has switched to Europe.

Nine months after Meek went public, on January 15, 1982, an electronics engineer named Hans-Otto Koenig, helped the now defunct Radio Luxembourg do a live broadcast on what was claimed to be a two-way conversation with a dead person.

Koenig had invented an ultrasound device after closely following Meek’s work which, he claimed, could replicate the Spiricom and Mueller/O’Neil dialogues. The equipment was set up under the watchful eye of the Radio Luxembourg engineers.

The device, nicknamed Koenig’s Generator by Rainer Holbe, the programs host, was connected to a set of speakers and switched on. An engineer asked over the air if any spirits cared to speak. Within seconds, a clear voice was heard. It said quite simply:

“Otto Koenig makes wireless with the dead.”

Understandably pandemonium broke out in the studio.

Another question was asked and seconds later a voice replied:

“We hear your voice.”

Rainer Holbe affirmed live on air there had been no trickery and later the station issued a statement stating that its engineers had found no natural explanation for what had happened.

Soon after, the device was demonstrated to members of the German EVP Association in Frankfurt where Konstantin Raudive, who had died in 1974, confirmed his presence. On the strength of this, one of Koenig’s associates Dr Ernst Senkowski, a physics lecturer, electronics expert and veteran EVP researcher, persuaded George Meek to fly to Germany.

After a demonstration of the Koenig’s Generator, Meek flew back convinced it was genuine and set about raising money to fund future work. Further research has been carried on by others in the field of electronics and radio who also have an interest in contacts with spirits.

Experiments held at a mansion in Newport Rhode Island have yielded some interesting results involving paranormal activity and the use of Shortwave Radio as a possible means of communication with other realities.

A research team led by Steve Cerilli has determined that tube based short-wave radios can provide a communication link with other planes of existence and their inhabitants. Recordings made on October 3, 1999 demonstrate that spirit entities can manipulate shortwave radios.

Curiously, the spirits present on that night learned how to better interact with the shortwave as the session progressed. By the end of the experiment, the entire room was awash with a form of static/electromagnetic energy. The tapes of this experiment are still undeveloped at this time.

Development of a paranormal recording involves re-dubbing the tape i.e. making multiple generations for reasons unknown. Research will be hopefully completed by the end of the decade.

A series of questions scripted by the research team were read by the owner of the location, which is known for its paranormal activity. The spirits were addressed and asked to participate in the experiment. The method of recording and equipment being used was then described. The questions asked were Socratic in nature, which means that they lead the listener to a revelation, each question building upon the former.

As a result of these experiments, all paranormal activity in the castle has stopped. It was the intention of the researchers to help these entities by achieving contact. The researchers felt that the spirits were somehow trapped or lost in between dimensions.

One possible scenario for disturbed spirit presences and haunting’s is that due to a tragic event in an individuals lifetime, the desire to remain on this plane of time creates a state of suspension. Spirits in this suspended state become prisoners of their own inability to let go.

It is believe that by establishing a communication link with the shortwave and asking relevant questions (Socratic method), lost spirits can be freed from their suspended state and made aware that there is nothing outside their own consciousness holding them back.

One of the participants, Jennipher Roos, described her experience that night.

“After spending the time it took to set up the equipment in the ballroom – about an hour, I walked outside to clear my thoughts and energy centers.

“Upon returning to the room, I could immediately feel changing vibrations with myself. I walked around the perimeter of the room in attempt to familiarize myself with my surroundings. I noticed a particularly strong feeling -highly sensational -in the corner of the room leading into the master bedroom.

“The only color of light I noticed before the experiments began, was a slight brightness in that corner of no particular color. The light surrounding the people participating in the study was nothing worth noting nothing out of the ordinary.

“During the first session, recording only, I was not aware of any overwhelming presence or energy disturbances. I was sitting on the floor -to the left of the Mayan sculpture. I felt centered and secure at all times; and although the room was highly charged, I cannot report any great shifts in the overall energy of the space and no specific concentrations of electromagnetism. The only notable change I observed was that the light in the corner of the room by the master bedroom had increased in intensity and now had a slightly bluish tinge.

“The next session, which involved the short wave radio was quite an experience for me personally. I had moved to the corner of the room which I previously described as highly active.

“Once I was centered on the floor and the questions began I could immediately sense a presence of some kind. A slight vibration moved from the floor, through my bottom and thighs, up my spine and into my head. This sensation was exceptionally strong and caused all of my hairs to stand on end.

“I placed my hands palm down on the floor in front of me and received the same sensation through my hands and arms, which heightened incredibly the overall effect. I could see luminous light all around me and when I moved my hand in front of me, the light attached itself to me and left a streak of light, like a tracer, in its path of movement.

“The short-wave radio was definitely receiving some sort of transmission amongst the white noise, but it was very faint deviations to me. However, about half-way through this session I began to hear other noises in the room.

“The best way I can describe them is like a low tone of church bells played very slowly…almost like a drone, but in a pattern that was repeatedly louder at the beginning of each “chime.” This sound was moving throughout the room in a circular fashion, like in stereo surround.

“As I focused all of my concentration and energy on the light and this sound, the short wave seemed to become more effected and I could definitely feel an increase of electromagnetic energy as the session progressed. At one point I was fairly overwhelmed with the feeling of it all…my body hair was on end for the entire session.

“I never observed any other colors at this time, nor did I feel that any of the participants, including myself were in any sort of danger. This part of the experiment was definitely the most powerful for me.

“I moved to the floor between the two aforementioned chairs and it was at this time that I started to notice huge changes in the short wave’s regularity as the speaker asked direct questions to specific pieces.

“The shortwave’s inflections were very quick after each question was asked, which indicates that perhaps the life forms are a bit more responsive when singled out individually.

“When the speaker addressed the Mayan statue, I observed it radiating a light that is best described as a dull-reddish magenta color. The light fully surrounded the Mayan and streamed off a bit in the direction of the microphone, but did not get close to it. this light remained until the session was over.”

Instrumental Transcommunication (ITC)

In 1985 Swiss electronics expert, Klaus Schreiber who, as a result of studying George Meek’s Spiricom designs, invented an apparatus he called “Vidicom.” The Vidicom consisted of a specially adapted TV, switched on but not attached to an aerial, with a video camera in front of it to capture images that appeared on the screen. One of the first pictures he received was a blurred, fleeting image of a human figure.

Occasionally just voices would come across, telling him how to tune his TV for better reception. A typical session would begin with a TV screen full of dots. Then small ovals would appear one after another, each growing quickly until they disappeared off the screen. Within minutes faces would start to appear along with voices, to the astonishment of Schreiber himself and his visitors.

It wasn’t long after Shreiber death in 1988 that his image started appearing on the TV screens of Europe’s ITC researchers. Schreiber’s friend Martin Wenzel continued his work with some success, but as with Spiricom the Schreiber method, to work effectively, needed to be used by someone with the sensitivity of a psychic and strong mediumistic links with other planes of existence.

In April 1990 George Meek’s wife Jeanette died after a long illness. Before she crossed over, however, Meek had asked her to get firmly in mind the names TimeStream (a spirit-side sending station linked to a young, leading-edge research laboratory in Luxembourg) and Swejen Salter (the system’s operator and research director on the spirit side). Hopefully these memories would act as a homing device once she crossed over, pulling Jeannette to the research station.

It apparently worked; three months after Jeannette’s funeral she reportedly had located the TimeStream station and sent the following letter to George via the Luxembourg computer:

“DEAR G.W. – WELL, IT SEEMS THERE ARE STILL PEOPLE WHO DO NOT BELIEVE IN THE CONTACTS YOUR FRIENDS HERE IN LUXEMBOURG ARE HAVING. HENCE I WILL GIVE YOU SOME PERSONAL DETAILS KNOWN ONLY TO YOU AND MOLLY.

“FIRST STORY. IN 1987, END OF APRIL, OUR TENANT DEBBIE CALLED TO SAY HER REFRIGERATOR WAS OFF. IT MUST HAVE BEEN ON A THURSDAY MORNING…

“SECOND STORY. ON APRIL 29, 1987, ANN VALENTIN WROTE A LETTER FORM CALIFORNIA SAYING SHE HAD NOT RECEIVED THE MAGIC OF LIVING FOREVER BOOKLETS SHE HAD ORDERED, BUT INSTEAD HAD RECEIVED A BOX OF HARLEQUIN NOVELS.

“THIRD STORY. JOHN LATHROP SHUTOFF THE ELECTRICITY AT OUR RENTAL HOUSE TO PUT IN THE NEW YARD LIGHT, HE WASN’T DOWN THERE VERY LONG BUT CHARGED $20 SERVICE IN ADDITION TO $40 FOR THE BULBS, PLUS TAX. THE CHARGE SEEMED HIGH.

“DON’T TRY TO EXPLAIN THIS, HONEY, MY NEVER-ENDING LOVE TO YOU. I MISS YOU SO MUCH, BUT I KNOW WE WILL BE TOGETHER. LOVE FOREVER, JEANNETTE DUNCAN MEEK.”

To support the validity of the ITC contact, Jeannette had selected three very private items known only to the Meeks and their secretary Molly Philo. The second item about romance novels, in fact, was a complete puzzle even to George.

Upon receiving Jeannette’s letter from the Luxembourg team and getting his excitement under control, Meek called Ann Valentinin California to verify item two. Sure enough, a carton of novels had arrived mysteriously in 1987, and to this day no one knows who sent them.

The most exciting and potentially fruitful development is that of communication via computer. Ken Webster of England published a book in which he reported on more than 200 computer contacts with local persons who had died more than three centuries ago.

One of Webster’s main contacts was 16th century Englishman Thomas Harden, who had lived in the same house that Webster now resided in, when the town was still named Bristol. From the astral planes, Harden could see Webster’s electronic equipment in the living room.

He referred to the computer as a box with a multitude of lights sitting near my chimney. Harden would communicate in old English grammar in a variety of ways -telepathic messages, scribbles on note paper, chalk-written messages on the floor and, most important, computer files written on the display screen and generated on hard disk.

Harden later was reported to have explained to his earth-side colleague Webster that the writing was formed according to his will or his visualization in the “Lightbox.” Another interesting feature was that Harden said that he wasn’t a discarnate entity, communicating from the beyond. Instead he claimed to be speaking from his own time in the 17th century. So rather then talking with the dead, this seems to be a case of time travel.

During the 1980’s psychic researchers became aware of claims that various people had received telephone calls from loved ones after they had died. The calls were usually only of short duration and when investigated did not register on normal telephone monitoring equipment. This subject was extensively covered by D. Scott Rogo in his book Telephone Calls From The Dead. (1979).

A husband and wife couple working in Luxembourg between 1985 and 1988 along with helpers from the afterlife, developed two electronic systems which became significantly more reliable and repeatable than the systems developed earlier.

Jules and Maggie Harsch-Fishbach in 1987 established computer contact which allows submission of technical questions with high speed print-out of the carefully considered replies. Also in 1987 they got TV picture sequences of good quality (Psychic News February 25th 1995).

By 1993 the research team in the afterlife was able to access the hard drives of computers and leave detailed, computer-scanned images as well as several pages of text. The computer-scanned images were far more detailed and less subject to distortion than the video images. Researchers on earth were able to direct questions to their counterparts on the other side and receive answers by telephone, radio, TV, computer, or fax (Kubris and Macy 1995: 14).

Dominic RMacquarie stated in the November 15, 1997 issue of Psychic News that communication between the earth plane and the afterlife is more successful when there is a mediumistic person, who has more than average ectoplasm present. This had earlier been confirmed by Konstantine, Raudive, German Professor E Senkowski and George Meek.

The need to have some form of electromagnetic energy present has always been recognized as an essential component of EVP. Macquarie claims that experimenters since 1963 have obtained better results if they turn on three twelve volt transformers (the kind which change household voltage to lower voltage for portable radios, CD players etc.) within 3 to 4 inches (8-12cms) of each other.

They produce a very quiet hum which provides a weak gentle field of electromagnetic energy which can be used by discarnate entities.

“One has always to keep in mind that whilst ectoplasm and electromagnetic energy must be present when communicating with the afterlife, an experimenter who is negative and uses the presumption of futility will be exuding negative energy and will dramatically reduce successful communication,” says Macquarie. “This ‘experimenter effect’ has been found in mediumship, laboratory testing and when using electronic equipment.

“So even though communication can occur through television, radio equipment and the telephone, the clarity of transmission depends on the contact field, the thoughts of those receiving the transmission. It has been discovered at large open meetings, that if a group of people had negative thoughts about ITC, their negative vibrations seriously affected the vibrations coming from the astral plane.”

Even though Nikola Tesla in his early years had little patience with those who believed in spirits and unknown psychic abilities, he may have had a change of heart later in his life and after leaving the physical plane. In 1998, a medium by the name of Alice Cromley alleged that she had made contact with the spirit of Tesla through electronic methods similar to what Tesla used.

In a series of communications, all conducted at a secure home in Montreal, Canada, Mrs. Cromley received information concerning Tesla’s continued existence after his death and the new discoveries that awaited him on the other side.

Tesla was apparently eager to tell those interested in his life and science, not to dismiss ideas that appear supernatural or not of science.

“Physics, extends beyond what is scientifically known today,” Tesla communicated. “The future will show that what we now call occult or the supernatural is based on a science not yet developed, but whose first infant steps are being taken as we speak!”

Fake Gold Bars in Bank of England and Fort Knox

[This story was brought to the surface late last year but this article is a great background to what happened and how it’s going to affect the future.]

Gold plated Tungsten Bars!

Jan 11, 2010

It’s one thing to counterfeit a twenty or hundred dollar bill. The amount of financial damage is usually limited to a specific region and only affects dozens of people and thousands of dollars. Secret Service agents quickly notify the banks on how to recognize these phony bills and retail outlets usually have procedures in place (such as special pens to test the paper) to stop their proliferation.

But what about gold? This is the most sacred of all commodities because it is thought to be the most trusted, reliable and valuable means of saving wealth.

A recent discovery — in October of 2009 — has been suppressed by the main stream media but has been circulating among the “big money” brokers and financial kingpins and is just now being revealed to the public. It involves the gold in Fort Knox — the US Treasury gold — that is the equity of our national wealth. In short, millions (with an “m”) of gold bars are fake!

Who did this? Apparently our own government.

Background

In October of 2009 the Chinese received a shipment of gold bars. Gold is regularly exchanges between countries to pay debts and to settle the so-called balance of trade. Most gold is exchanged and stored in vaults under the supervision of a special organization based in London, the London Bullion Market Association (or LBMA). When the shipment was received, the Chinese government asked that special tests be performed to guarantee the purity and weight of the gold bars. In this test, four small holes are drilled into the gold bars and the metal is then analyzed.

Officials were shocked to learn that the bars were fake. They contained cores of tungsten with only a outer coating of real gold. What’s more, these gold bars, containing serial numbers for tracking, originated in the US and had been stored in Fort Knox for years. There were reportedly between 5,600 to 5,700 bars, weighing 400 oz. each, in the shipment!

At first many gold experts assumed the fake gold originated in China, the world’s best knock-off producers. The Chinese were quick to investigate and issued a statement that implicated the US in the scheme.

What the Chinese uncovered

Roughly 15 years ago — during the Clinton Administration [think Robert Rubin, Sir Alan Greenspan and Lawrence Summers] — between 1.3 and 1.5 million 400 oz tungsten blanks were allegedly manufactured by a very high-end, sophisticated refiner in the USA [more than 16 Thousand metric tonnes]. Subsequently, 640,000 of these tungsten blanks received their gold plating and WERE shipped to Ft. Knox and remain there to this day.

According to the Chinese investigation, the balance of this 1.3 million to 1.5 million 400 oz tungsten cache was also gold plated and then allegedly “sold” into the international market. Apparently, the global market is literally “stuffed full of 400 oz salted bars”. Perhaps as much as 600-billion dollars worth.

An obscure news item originally published in the N.Y. Post [written by Jennifer Anderson] in late Jan. 04 perhaps makes sense now.

A top executive at the New York Mercantile Exchange is being investigated by the Manhattan district attorney. Sources close to the exchange said that Stuart Smith, senior vice president of operations at the exchange, was served with a search warrant by the district attorney’s office last week. Details of the investigation have not been disclosed, but a NYMEX spokeswoman said it was unrelated to any of the exchange’s markets. She declined to comment further other than to say that charges had not been brought. A spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney’s office also declined comment.

The offices of the Senior Vice President of Operations — NYMEX — is exactly where you would go to find the records [serial number and smelter of origin] for EVERY GOLD BAR ever PHYSICALLY settled on the exchange. They are required to keep these records. These precise records would show the lineage of all the physical gold settled on the exchange and hence “prove” that the amount of gold in question could not have possibly come from the U.S. mining operations — because the amounts in question coming from U.S. smelters would undoubtedly be vastly bigger than domestic mine production.

No one knows whatever happened to Stuart Smith. After his offices were raided he took “administrative leave” from the NYMEX and he has never been heard from since. Amazingly, there never was any follow up on in the media on the original story as well as ZERO developments ever stemming from D.A. Morgenthau’s office who executed the search warrant.

Are we to believe that NYMEX offices were raided, the Sr. V.P. of operations then takes leave — all for nothing?

The revelations of fake gold bars also explains another highly unusual story that also happened in 2004:

LONDON, April 14, 2004 (Reuters) — NM Rothschild & Sons Ltd., the London-based unit of investment bank Rothschild [ROT.UL], will withdraw from trading commodities, including gold, in London as it reviews its operations, it said on Wednesday.

Interestingly, GATA’s Bill Murphy speculated about this back in 2004:

“Why is Rothschild leaving the gold business at this time my colleagues and I conjectured today? Just a guess on my part, but [I] suspect something is amiss. They know a big scandal is coming and they don’t want to be a part of it… [The] Rothschild wants out before the proverbial “S” hits the fan.” — BILL MURPHY, LEMETROPOLE, 4-18-2004

What is the GATA?

The Gold Antitrust Action Committee (GATA) is an organisation which has been nipping at the heels of the US Treasury Federal Reserve for several years now. The basis of GATA’s accusations is that these institutions, in coordination with other complicit central banks and the large gold-trading investment banks in the US, have been manipulating the price of gold for decades.

What is the GLD?

GLD is a short form for Good London Delivery. The London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) has defined “good delivery” as a delivery from an entity which is listed on their delivery list or meets the standards for said list and whose bars have passed testing requirements established by the associatin and updated from time to time. The bars have to be pure for AU in an area of 995.0 to 999.9 per 1000. Weight, Shape, Appearance, Marks and Weight Stamps are regulated as follows:

Weight: minimum 350 fine ounces AU; maximum 430 fine ounces AU, gross weight of a bar is expressed in troy ounces, in multiples of 0.025, rounded down to the nearest 0.025 of an troy ounce.

After reviewing their prospectus yet again, it becomes pretty clear that GLD was established to purposefully deflect investment dollars away from legitimate gold pursuits and to create a stealth, cesspool / catch-all, slush-fund and a likely destination for many of these fake tungsten bars where they would never see the light of day — hidden behind the following legalese “shield” from the law:

[Excerpt from the GLD prospectus on page 11]

“Gold bars allocated to the Trust in connection with the creation of a Basket may not meet the London Good Delivery Standards and, if a Basket is issued against such gold, the Trust may suffer a loss. Neither the Trustee nor the Custodian independently confirms the fineness of the gold bars allocated to the Trust in connection with the creation of a Basket. The gold bars allocated to the Trust by the Custodian may be different from the reported fineness or weight required by the LBMA’s standards for gold bars delivered in settlement of a gold trade, or the London Good Delivery Standards, the standards required by the Trust. If the Trustee nevertheless issues a Basket against such gold, and if the Custodian fails to satisfy its obligation to credit the Trust the amount of any deficiency, the Trust may suffer a loss.”

The Federal Reserve knows but is apparently part of the scheme. Earlier this year GATA filed a second Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Federal Reserve System for documents from 1990 to date having to do with gold swaps, gold swapped, or proposed gold swaps.

On Aug. 5, The Federal Reserve responded to this FOIA request by adding two more documents to those disclosed to GATA in April 2008 from the earlier FOIA request. These documents totaled 173 pages, many parts of which were redacted (blacked out). The Fed’s response also noted thatthere were 137 pages of documents not disclosed that were alleged to be exempt from disclosure.

GATA appealed this determination on Aug. 20. The appeal asked for more information to substantiate the legitimacy of the claimed exemptions from disclosure and an explanation on why some documents, such as one posted on the Federal Reserve Web site that discusses gold swaps, were not included in the Aug. 5 document release.

The first paragraph on the third page is the most revealing. “In connection with your appeal, I have confirmed that the information withheld under exemption 4 consists of confidential commercial or financial information relating to the operations of the Federal Reserve Banks that was obtained within the meaning of exemption 4. This includes information relating to swap arrangements with foreign banks on behalf of the Federal Reserve System and is not the type of information that is customarily disclosed to the public. This information was properly withheld from you.”

The above statement is an admission that the Federal Reserve has been involved with the fake gold bar swaps and that it refuses to disclose any information about its activities!

Why use tungsten?

If you are going to print fake money you need to have the special paper, otherwise the bills don’t feel right and can be easily detected by special pens that most merchants and banks use. Likewise, if you are going to fake gold bars you had better be sure they have the same weight and properties of real gold.

In early 2008 millions of dollars in gold at the central bank of Ethiopia turned out to be fake.What were supposed to be bars of solid gold turned out to be nothing more than gold-plated steel. They tried to sell the stuff to South Africa and it was sent back when the South Africans noticed this little problem. The problem with making good-quality fake gold is that gold is remarkably dense. It’s almost twice the density of lead, and two-and-a-half times more dense than steel. You don’t usually notice this because small gold rings and the like don’t weigh enough to make it obvious, but if you’ve ever held a larger bar of gold, it’s absolutely unmistakable: The stuff is very, very heavy.

The standard gold bar for bank-to-bank trade, known as a “London good delivery bar” weighs 400 troy ounces (over thirty-three pounds), yet is no bigger than a paperback novel. A bar of steel the same size would weigh only thirteen and a half pounds.

According to gold expert, Theo Gray, the problem is that there are very few metals that are as dense as gold, and with only two exceptions they all cost as much or more than gold.

The first exception is depleted uranium, which is cheap if you’re a government, but hard for individuals to get. It’s also radioactive, which could be a bit of an issue.

The second exception is a real winner: tungsten. Tungsten is vastly cheaper than gold (maybe $30 dollars a pound compared to $12,000 a pound for gold right now). And remarkably, it has exactly the same density as gold, to three decimal places. The main differences are that it’s the wrong color, and that it’s much, much harder than gold. (Very pure gold is quite soft, you can dent it with a fingernail.)

A top-of-the-line fake gold bar should match the color, surface hardness, density, chemical, and nuclear properties of gold perfectly. To do this, you could could start with a tungsten slug about 1/8-inch smaller in each dimension than the gold bar you want, then cast a 1/16-inch layer of real pure gold all around it. This bar would feel right in the hand, it would have a dead ring when knocked as gold should, it would test right chemically, it would weigh *exactly* the right amount, and though I don’t know this for sure, I think it would also pass an x-ray fluorescence scan, the 1/16″ layer of pure gold being enough to stop the x-rays from reaching any tungsten. You’d pretty much have to drill it to find out it’s fake.

Such a top-quality fake London good delivery bar would cost about $50,000 to produce because it’s got a lot of real gold in it, but you’d still make a nice profit considering that a real one is worth closer to $400,000.

What’s going to happen now?

Politicians like Ron Paul have been demanding that the Federal Reserve be more transparent and open up their records for public scrutiny. But the Fed has consistently refused, stating that these disclosures would undermine its operation.

Monday 25 January 2010

The Obama administration is ramping up its use of drone unmanned aircraft to execute targeted killings in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and perhaps in other locations – and, in the process, killing civilians along with insurgents, and risking the compromise of US moral imperatives and foreign policy goals.

That’s the view of a leading civil rights organization, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), calling on the president to lift the curtain of secrecy and level with the American people.

The ACLU is asking the government to release basic information about its use of drones to execute targeted killings. The group believes that “the use and proliferation of this tactic must be the subject of public scrutiny and debate.” The strikes are reportedly being carried out both by US military forces and the CIA.

The request is seeking information, including who may be targeted and the geographical limits on where drone strikes may occur. It wants information about the scope and consequences of drone strikes, including a breakdown of the total number of people killed, the civilian casualty toll, the number of people killed who were fighters with the Afghan Taliban or al-Qaeda in Afghanistan or who had some other terror-related affiliation or status.

“The public has been kept in the dark and is therefore unable to assess the wisdom or legality of the strikes,” the group claimed.

“The use of drones to conduct targeted killings raises complicated questions – not just legal questions but policy and moral questions as well. These are not questions that should be decided behind closed doors. They are questions that should be debated openly, and the public should have access to information that would allow it to participate meaningfully in the debate,” according to Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project.

One of the unmanned vehicles, known as the Predator, is capable of flying for hours, armed or unarmed, remotely controlled by pilots who are stationed thousands of miles away. The Predator is part of a growing number of similar craft that includes the Reaper and Raven as well as a new, high-tech video sensor system called the Gorgon Stare, which is being installed on Reapers.

The ACLU charged that the Obama administration has stepped up the use of drones to target individuals not only in Afghanistan, but also in Pakistan and perhaps other countries that are not active theaters of war.

“The use of unmanned drones to target and kill individuals is a profoundly new way of waging war. For the first time, military and intelligence officers can observe, track, and launch missiles at targeted individuals from control centers located thousands of miles away, without any significant US presence on the ground. The technology also permits the United States to target individuals nearly anywhere in the world,” the organization claimed.

The number of civilian casualties caused by drone attacks varies from the dozens to the hundreds. Human rights organizations are particularly concerned that drones could be used to target criminal suspects rather than legitimate military targets. Criminal suspects should be arrested and tried in civilian courts, the ACLU contended, adding that failure to do so could amount to “unlawful extrajudicial killings.”

The ACLU also raised concerns about the wisdom of using drones on policy and moral grounds.

“We hope that the Obama administration will live up to its professed commitments to transparency and openness in government and release this essential information in a timely manner,” the group said.

The increasing use of drones by the US has drawn sharp criticism from President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and other high Pakistani officials.

Jonathan Manes, an ACLU attorney, told Truthout, “The Obama administration has stepped up the use of drones to target individuals not only in Afghanistan, but also in Pakistan, and that drones strikes might be authorized in other countries that are not active theaters of war.”

Pakistan said the strikes against suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban militants along its northwest violate its sovereignty. The attacks have resulted in serious anti-American feelings in Pakistan, which Washington sees as a critical ally in its war on extremism.

Gilani has told the press that drone attacks carried out on Pakistani soil were “counter-productive.” He said, “If the drone attacks had been useful, then we would have ourselves supported them.”

Gilani said the militants in the northwestern tribal areas bordering Afghanistan are strengthened by US missile strikes. “Our policy is to isolate militants from the local tribes, but drone attacks unite them,” he said.

His view was echoed by Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, who told Reuters that intensified US drone aircraft attacks against Islamist militants in Pakistan could endanger relations between the two allies.

But when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, she told a news conference the US was standing “shoulder to shoulder” with Pakistan in its military offensive. And the increased use of unmanned Predator drones is one of the highest profile ways the US is doing that.

The White House authorized an expansion of the CIA’s drone program in Pakistan’s tribal areas to parallel the president’s decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. The New York Times reported that American officials are talking with Pakistan about the possibility of striking in Baluchistan for the first time – “a controversial move since it is outside the tribal areas – because that is where Afghan Taliban leaders are believed to hide.”

US strategy for eliminating safe havens for militants in the region turns on increasing covert pressure on al-Qaeda and its allies in Pakistan, while ground forces attempt to reverse the Taliban’s advances in Afghanistan.

Investigative reporter Jane Mayer of The New Yorker magazine has revealed that the number of US drone strikes in Pakistan has risen dramatically under President Obama. During his first 9.5 months in office, Obama authorized at least 41 CIA missile strikes in Pakistan, a rate of approximately one bombing a week. President Bush sanctioned approximately the same number of attacks in his final three years in office.

The attacks have killed between 326 and 538 people, according to Mayer. She wrote, “there is no longer any doubt that targeted killing has become official US policy.”

One of the most high-profile critics of the US drone program has been the United Nations human rights envoy, Philip Alston, the UN’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions.

Alston told Amy Goodman of the Democracy Now! radio program that the US government’s use of Predator drones may violate international law. He also raised the issue in a report to the UN General Assembly’s Human Rights Committee and said the US should explain the legal basis for using unmanned drones for targeted killings.

In June, Alston presented a critical report on the drone program to the UN Human Rights Council, but he said US representatives ignored his concerns.

He said, “If you’re a Defense Department person, it’s a very attractive proposition. One can use the Predators without putting US servicemen in any harm. They are very effective. They can kill very significant numbers of people.”

But, he added, “The problem is that we have no real information on this program. What Jane Mayer exposed in her New Yorker piece is probably the most detailed information we have. She herself said that the CIA provides no information. It’s extraordinary that it’s the Central Intelligence Agency which is actually operating a missile program, which is actually deciding who to kill, when and where.”

Alston added, “There’s no accountability for it. There’s no indication of the rules that they use. So, I said before, there are rules, that it’s possible to justify a particular killing, but the CIA has never tried to do that. They have simply issued a general assurance: ‘No, no, everything’s fine. We really follow the rules, and we’re very careful.’ Well, if Israel or some other country that we’re scrutinizing says that, we say, ‘Sorry, guys, it’s not enough. We need to get the details’.”

Alston has called on the American government to make clear the details of the program; the legal basis, under US law, on which they are relying; the rules that they have put in place which govern the CIA actions, assuming there are rules; and what sort of accountability mechanisms they have. Do they review what they’ve done? They identify an individual. Often these identifications are very vague. But they say, “‘O.K., we’ve got X in our sights.’ Did they actually kill X? Did they kill someone else? How many other civilians did they kill? There’s never any accounting of that. And we need that sort of retrospective analysis, as well.”

He added that, in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, “The United States has not done nearly enough, even today, to make sure that private military contractors do not carry out virtually all tasks, including, it seems, running a part of the drone program.”

But the drone program also has its fans. One of them is John Yoo, the former Office of Legal Counsel deputy who wrote the so-called “torture memos. ” Yoo appeared at the conservative American Enterprise Institute recently.

He said that in some areas, President Obama has gone beyond George W. Bush when it comes to the use of executive power. Yoo pointed toward the Obama administration’s increased use of predator drones overseas as an example.

“If we were still in peacetime, and this were the criminal justice system, police are not allowed to shoot missiles at people who might be criminals, might be about to commit a criminal act or might have committed a criminal act, even if we have a hard time finding and arresting them,” said Yoo. He added that in this area Obama has gone beyond Bush.

He said figuring out how to target terrorists is much more difficult because they do not wear uniforms or have territories. “It’s a complicated process that we had not had to think about before, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a war.”

Two leading US senators are also strong supporters of the drone program. They are Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Joe Lieberman, Independent of Connecticut. Their recent visit to Islamabad underscored tensions between the anti-terrorist allies caused by strikes unmanned aircraft strikes against suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda targets.

“Friends don’t always agree on every issue,” Senator . McCain said at a news conference in Islamabad, adding that the United States will “try to find common ground” with Pakistani leaders on the drone issue, but that “we have to do everything we feel is necessary to protect Americans from the attacks of terrorists who may be based here.”

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari asked the senators to seek a halt to the drone attacks. He said they are undermining domestic support for the war against Islamist militants and asked that the United States give Pakistan the technology to carry out such strikes on its own.

Following the December 30 suicide bombing at a US base in eastern Afghanistan that killed seven CIA officers and contractors, Washington has also increased its use of the controversial strikes near the Afghan border. Suspected US missiles killed four people and injured three in the latest raid on the North Waziristan tribal area. That was the sixth attack in the region in a week, the Associated Press reported. The AP quoted two Pakistani intelligence officials, who said a pair of missiles struck a house and a vehicle in a village near the town of Miran Shah. They did not identify the victims.

It is the civilian deaths that are giving US policymakers serious headaches. The strategy outlined by Gen. Stanley McChrystal – and supported by Obama with the deployment of 30,000 additional troops – centers on protecting the Afghan people. It is unclear how killing civilians with drone attacks furthers that goal.

In a related development, military observers have revealed – and their revelations have been confirmed by the US military – that a new, “stealthy” US drone, nicknamed “The Beast,” is operating out of Kandahar, Afghanistan.

But they question what it’s doing there. One military web site wrote, “Since the Taliban do not have radar, why deploy an expensive, stealthy drone when conventional models like the Predator and Reaper work so well? And what’s the point of having a high-level, strategic craft in that theater?”

It says the speculation is that The Beast may be carrying out missions outside of Afghanistan, with Iran and Pakistan both being possible candidates.

The Air Force has confirmed The Beast’s existence to Aviation Week magazine. “Officially, it’s an RQ-170 Sentinel, developed by Lockheed and flown by the flown by the 30th Reconnaissance Squadron at Tonopah Test Range in Nevada,” the magazine reported.

And, in something of an embarrassment for the US military, The New York Times reported that insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan have hacked into live video feeds from Predator drones, a key weapon in a Pentagon spy system that serves as the military’s eyes in the sky for surveillance and intelligence collection.

Though militants could see the video, The Times said there is no evidence they were able to jam the electronic signals from the unmanned aerial craft or take control of the vehicles, according to a senior defense official speaking on condition of anonymity.

Obtaining the video feeds can provide insurgents with critical information about what the military may be targeting, including buildings, roads and other facilities. The military has reportedly known about the vulnerability for more than a decade, but assumed adversaries would not be able to exploit it.

By ADAM SCHRECK, Associated Press Writer.

RAMADI, Iraq – The U.S. Marine Corps wrapped up nearly seven years in Iraq on Saturday, handing over duties to the Army and signaling the beginning of an accelerated withdrawal of American troops as the U.S. turns its focus away from the waning Iraqi war to a growing one in Afghanistan.

In Baghdad, meanwhile, Vice President Joe Biden held talks with Iraqi leaders amid rising tensions over plans to ban election candidates because of suspected links to Saddam Hussein’s regime.

The White House worries the bans could raise questions over the fairness of the March 7 parliamentary elections, which are seen as an important step in the American pullout timetable and breaking political stalemates over key issues such as dividing Iraq’s oil revenue.

The Marines formally handed over control of Sunni-dominated Anbar, Iraq’s largest province, to the Army during a ceremony at a base in Ramadi — where some of the fiercest fighting of the war took place.

Iraqi and American color guards stood together at attention as both countries’ national anthems were played by a U.S. military band.

Sharing the front row at the handover ceremony with American Army and Marine generals were some of Anbar’s influential tribal sheiks in traditional checkered headdresses and gold-embellished robes. Their decision to shift support to the Americans is credited with sapping the insurgency of much of its strength.

Maj. Gen. Terry Wolff, the Army commander who assumed responsibility for the province, said he hoped security gains cemented by U.S. troops and their Iraqi counterparts should ensure a smooth transfer despite the overall drawdown in American forces.

“The goal that we all seek is the Iraqis securing their own election, and that the election is fair and the election is free,” he told reporters after the handover. “It’s all based on the fact that the Iraqis, and particularly the Anbaris, can secure themselves. And that’s the encouraging aspect.”

If all goes as planned, the last remaining Marines will be followed out by tens of thousands of soldiers in the coming months. President Barack Obama has ordered all but 50,000 troops out of the country by Aug. 31, 2010, with most to depart after the March 7 parliamentary election.

The remaining troops will leave by the end of 2011 under a U.S.-Iraqi security pact.

But concerns about the success of the election — and perhaps the loss of hard won security gains that the Marines helped cement — are on the rise because of a growing political dispute that could see more than 500 candidates blacklisted because of suspected ties to previous regime.

The changeover at Ramadi, west of Baghdad, leaves the U.S. Army’s 1st Armored Division with responsibility over both Baghdad and Anbar, the vast desert province that stretches from western Baghdad to the borders ofSyria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

The province was once the heart of the deadly Sunni insurgency that erupted after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. In the battles for control of the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, the Marines saw some of the most brutal and deadliest fighting of the war.

Violence began dropping off in the province in late 2006 when Sunni fighters — known as Awakening Councils— turned against al-Qaida and sided with the Marines to fight the insurgency.

As many as 25,000 Marines were in Iraq at the peak, mostly in Anbar province. The few thousand who remain — except for U.S. Embassy guards and advisers in Baghdad — are expected to ship out in a matter of weeks.

The upcoming parliamentary election is also considered an important step toward speeding the U.S. troop pullout and seeking progress on stalled political initiatives. Among them: passing laws clarifying the rules for foreign oil investment and dividing the revenue among Iraq’s main groups.

But plans to ban hundreds of candidates have raised deep concerns in Washington that the voting could widen rifts between the majority Shiites who gained power after Saddam’s fall and Sunnis who are struggling to regain influence.

Biden, who arrived late Friday, had a full agenda of meetings with Iraqi leaders including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has strongly supported the blacklist and has resisted attempts at possible American mediation.

Some Sunni leaders have accused the Shiite-led government of using the ban as a political tool. But al-Maliki insists that Iraq must purge all ties to Saddam’s Sunni-dominated regime. A vetting panel has put 512 names on the blacklist and more are expected.

Iraqi government spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, told The Associated Press that al-Maliki’s meeting with Biden reinforced the stance that the election rules are “an Iraqi affair to be decided by the Iraqis themselves.”

Al-Dabbagh said Biden was careful not to “give the wrong message that America wants to interfere in the Iraqi affairs.”

There was no immediate word from Biden or his aides on the talks.

Biden’s schedule also includes a meeting with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who has asked for a legal review on the blacklist. The courts are expected to examine whether the vetting panel has legal grounding because it does not have formal parliamentary approval.

The panel includes two controversial Shiite figures: Ali al-Lami, who was once detained by the U.S. militaryover a 2008 attack in a Shiite district of Baghdad; and Ahmed Chalabi, who is blamed for supplying U.S. officials with faulty intelligence on Saddam’s weapons program prior to the 2003 invasion.

Al-Lami is also a candidate in the March elections — raising further complaints from Sunnis about possible political motives behind the list.